In a commonly owned copending application filed by Harold G. Simpson, Ser. No. 183,717, filed Sept. 3, 1980, and entitled Roof Panel Assemblies for Forming Weather-Proof Standing Seam Joints and the like and Methods of Joining Standing Seam Roof Panels, there is disclosed a standing seam roof panel employed as a modular element in the construction of metal roofs for buildings. This particular panel is of an elongate rectangular shape, and is formed from sheet metal material to have upstanding longitudinal seam sections which extend the entire length of the two opposed longitudinal sides of the panel. The outermost sides of these seam sections include a generally vertical outwardly facing wall which, in the assembly of a roof, is clamped in opposed face-to-face relationship with the corresponding wall on the seam section of the next adjacent panel.
Because the vertical wall portion of the standing seam section has a finite transverse thickness--in the specific panel referred to above, the vertical wall actually is bent inwardly into an inverted U-shaped transverse cross-section--the panels cannot be conveniently stacked on top of each other because the vertical wall portions of one panel will rest upon the vertical portions of the next lowermost panel in the stack with all remaining portions of the two panels being out of contact with each other. A stack so formed is not particularly stable, because it requires only a slight misalignment of two panels to cause one side of the upper panel to slip inwardly of the relatively narrow transverse extent of the wall of the next lowermost panel and thus drop into a tilted position which will topple that portion of the stack above the tilted panel.
The present invention is especially devised to provide a stable stack configuration for panels of this general type and to provide a simple and efficient method for assembling the panels into such a stack for packaging.